A. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to devices for obtaining samples of harvested forage. More particularly, the present invention is directed to a device for obtaining a sample of a volume of hay which is loose or which has been baled, rolled, or stacked.
B. The Prior Art
The raising of livestock for both food and fiber is an important industry throughout the world. While it is sometimes the case that livestock are raised on open range land or open pasture, it is becoming increasingly important to modern agriculture that forage be harvested and stored for later use, particularly during the colder winter months. Also, due to the increased specialization of modern agriculture, and with livestock often being located a significant distance away from a source of forage, it is important to be able to conveniently store and transport forage.
Forage may be defined as any agricultural crop which is used for feeding livestock. Forage may be stored as silage, which is the feed resulting from the storage and fermentation of green wet crops under anaerobic conditions. Alternatively, forage may be stored as hay, which is the above ground part of a stemmed forage crop which is stored in dry form for later feeding to livestock.
Many different forages may be stored as hay. Such forages may include legume plants such as red clover, alsike clover, lespedeza, sericca, and alfalfa. Of the above listed legumes, alfalfa is by far the most commonly grown in the midwestern and western portions of the United States. Nonlegume plants that are stored as hay include coastal bermuda grass, Timothy grass, red top grass, bromegrass, orchard grass, and many other nonlegume forages.
All of the above forages are generally cut and then dried into hay as they lay in the field. The object in making hay is to reduce the moisture content of green forage crops sufficiently to permit their safe storage without spoilage or serious loss of nutrients. Generally, the maximum permissible moisture content for hay at the time of baling is in the range of from about eighteen percent (18%) to about twenty-two percent (22%), depending upon a variety of factors.
It is important to properly harvest and dry the hay before it is stored. Freshly mown hay which is stored before it is sufficiently dry can be destroyed by fire resulting from spontaneous combustion. Hay which is stored containing excessive moisture may also tend to mold, making it unsuitable for feed purposes. Furthermore, hay which is improperly harvested may suffer from a loss of nutritional value due to the loss of leaves, the most nutritious part of the hay.
The time of harvesting, even when varying by one day, may make a significant difference in the nutritional content of the hay. Presently, it is common to store hay in the form of bales, rolls, or as a stack which is a relatively large "loaf-like" compressed form.
Of course, the reason hay is stored and fed to livestock is to provide the livestock with proper amounts of nutrition and roughage. As suggested earlier, the nutrition of various volumes of hay may vary greatly from one volume to the next even when the hay is harvested from the same field. Again, the time of harvest, weather conditions, and harvesting techniques all have an impact on the nutritional value of the hay.
It is important for the owner of livestock to know the nutritional content of the particular hay which is being fed to the livestock. If the hay is low in a particular nutrient, supplements may need to be added to form a balanced ration so that the growth of the livestock is not retarded. Knowing the nutritional value of the hay being fed to dairy cattle is particularly important since dairy cattle will not produce the maximum possible amount of milk unless provided with proper nutrition.
Beef cattle also require a balanced ration for maximum growth. Since meat is sold by the pound, the proper growth of the beef cattle, or other livestock, has a great impact on the income and profitability of any livestock operation. Still further, individuals engaged in the production of hay for sale to others receive a higher price for hay which is more nutritious than less desirable hay. Thus, there is an acute need to know the nutritional content of the hay that is being fed to the livestock.
Generally, a minimal nutritional analysis of hay will specify the content of the hay in the following categories: moisture; crude protein; crude fats; crude fiber; nitrogen free extract; and mineral matter or ash. Furthermore, it may be desirable to determine the amounts of minerals and vitamins in the hay sample.
Often a farm is devoted nearly exclusively to the production of hay, generally alfalfa in the western United States, which is to be sold to others. In such a case, both the owner of the livestock buying the hay, and the farmer selling the hay, desire to know the nutritive content of the hay so that a fair price may be established. However, as indicated earlier, it is necessary to determine the nutritive content of particular volumes of hay to be sold since the time and method of harvesting may dramatically affect the nutritive content.
As indicated earlier, if the hay is stored in bales it would be desirable to learn the actual nutritive content of each bale of hay. However, since this is not practical, it is necessary to rely on taking random samples of the hay and assume that the resulting combined sample is representative of the nutritive value of the hay to be sold or fed.
Because of the variations in nutritive value, very unacceptable results are obtained when only three or four bales out of, for example, 1,000 bales of the hay are used in the sample. Likewise, obtaining perhaps 50 "grab samples" by randomly pulling "chunks" of hay from the surface of 25 bales is also unacceptable. Merely pulling a "chunk" of hay from the surface of the bale often causes the leaves to fall from the stems, the leaves being the most nutritious part of the hay, thus causing the hay to appear low in nutritive value when analyzed. Also, the hay on the outer surface of a bale may be of lower nutritive value, due to exposure to the sun and weather, than the hay in the interior of the same bale.
In many cases, the misinformation obtained by poor sampling techniques is more misleading than if the hay were just assumed to be "average". It has been found that the best method of obtaining a sample of hay for nutritional analysis is to obtain a sample which includes many small cores taken from several bales, the cores including material from the outer surface of the bale's butt end to nearly the middle of the bale.
Due to the critical need to obtain an accurate sample of hay for nutritional analysis, those skilled in the art have long felt a need for a device which allows the obtaining of such a sample while not seriously disrupting the volume of hay, such as a bale. In recent years, the convenience of making, as well as the accuracy of, nutritional analysis of hay has increased due to new techniques and testing devices. However, the accuracy of any analysis is severely limited by whether or not the sample used for the analysis is representative of the hay to be sold or fed. In an effort to satisfy this long felt need, many devices have been produced.
One type of device for sampling hay which is found in the prior art for sampling hay is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,516,438 to Hodge (the Hodge patent). The hay probe disclosed in the Hodge patent includes a pair of heavy duty handles which are mounted on the side of a hollow elongated straight probe. A glass jar is attached to the end of the probe so that the material entering the probe is deposited into the glass jar.
When using the device disclosed in the Hodge patent, the user grasps the handles and, sometimes with a great deal of effort, attempts to push or plunge the hollow probe as far as possible into the hay. Many times bales of hay are very tightly packed, thus creating an efficient ratio of weight of the bale to the size of the bale for storage and transportation, but also making insertion of such a probe extremely difficult. Such difficulty during insertion and removal of the probe is often referred to as binding. Still further, in the device disclosed in the Hodge patent, the hollow tube may become plugged with the hay core which is being obtained. Use of such probes as disclosed in the Hodge patent may often times be so difficult that the user will quickly fatigue and thus decide to obtain, for example, only five cores rather than the recommended twenty cores which may be necessary for a statistically accurate sample for analysis.
Other devices available in the art improve somewhat on the device disclosed in the Hodge patent. For example, one device, manufactured by Northwest AG Consultants, Inc. of Culver, Oreg., incorporates a knife edge around the open perimeter of the hollow probe. A further improvement includes the use of a hand brace (of the type sometimes used by carpenters to drill holes in a board) which may be attached to the probe. Devices which are intended to be used with hand braces include those manufactured by Forageuers, Inc. of Minneapolis, Minn. and Northwest AG Consultants, Inc. By use of a hand brace, the user is allowed to, still with some difficultly, rotate the probe thus decreasing the relative effort required to insert the probe into the bale.
Still further, in an attempt to reduce the effort that must be expended by the user and thus also the resulting fatigue, some devices are available which allow the replacement of a hand brace with an hand-held electric motor. These devices include those available from Nasco West of Modesto, Calif., and Oakfield Apparatus, Inc. of Oakfield, Wis.
However, the requirement of a power supply for the electric motor often discourages use of such power operated devices, in addition to their added weight, cost, and complexity. Also, if a power operated device should bind within a bale, the user may suffer an injury, for example, a sprained wrist. Thus, a hay sampling device should be easily operable manually or alternatively, safely operated by an electric motor for those occasions where a power supply is readily available.
As will be appreciated from the foregoing discussion, obtaining a representative sample of hay from a plurality of bales, rolls, or stacks has been a problem faced by those skilled in the present art for a long time. As evidenced by the attempts found in the prior art, many skilled in the art have searched for a solution to the long felt need for a device to assist in obtaining a representative sample of hay.
In view of the foregoing problems found in the prior art, it would be a significant advance in the art to provide a hay sampling probe which may be easily and efficiently inserted into, and withdrawn from, a bale, roll, or stack of hay by a single user. It would also be beneficial to provide a hay sampling probe which is resistant to binding and plugging of the probe while the sample is being taken.